Travels of an Australian Swami

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Monthly Archives: February 2013

The GBCs for Mayapur, along with other departmental leaders, met again to discuss future plans for developing the project here. Srila Prabhupada said, “We are making a very gorgeous plan at Mayapur and if you altogether can give shape to this plan, it will be unique if not in the whole world then at least in all of India.”

This year, during the master-plan section of the meeting, everyone got in a big bus and drove to various locations around our 700 acre property. Praghosa prabhu, who was chairing the meeting, thought that it would be a good idea to get a first hand perspective by directly seeing the needs of the community and seeing the construction work in progress.

We pray that by the mercy of Sri Radha Madhava, Sri Panca Tattva and Lord Nrsimhadeva, Srila Prabhupada’s vision for Mayapur will be fulfilled.

The construction of the Temple of Vedic Planetarium has been moving along steadily since I was in Mayapur last. Right now the work is concentrated on the main dome and the dome above Lord Nrsimha’s alter. After a few months, they will begin to build the dome for the planetarium itself.

Sadbhuja das, who is charge of the construction team, told me that this work will be a little slower than the initial foundation and structural stages. This is because it is fiddly and trickier. Building domes is a specialised art that requires steel pipes, ribs and arches being bent exactly to shape so everything meets up leaving no gaps. All of it needs to support tons of cement, tiles, glass and other materials.

Hopefully, in a few years time, the inside will be finished up to the point where the main deities of Sridhama Mayapur, Sri Radha Madhava, Panca Tattva and Lord Nrsimhadeva, can be installed on Their new alters.

One time in 1976 when Srila Prabhupada was visiting our ISKCON temple at Juhu Beach, he asked Giriraja Maharaja and Nitai das to organise a library of books compiled by himself and other predecessor acaryas. These included works of great luminaries such as, the six goswamis, Visvanath Cakravarti Thakur, Baladeva Vidyabhusana, Bhaktivinoda Thakur and Bhaktisiddhanta Sarasvati Thakur. Prabhupada also wanted works of vaisnava sampradaya acaryas such as, Ramanujacarya, Sridhar Swami and Madhvacarya.

At that time the devotees were unable to arrange it but in 2009 Hari Sauri prabhu, remembering Srila Prabhupada’s instruction, took up this important service with the help of other interested devotees. They acquired and renovated three floors of space at our “Gita Bhavan” building in Kolkata and started to locate and collect the books, some of which were very old and in poor condition. Now they have built up the library to hundreds and thousands of works, painstakingly preserving them as they collect more and more.

Eventually all the books will be scanned and posted on line so that anyone, anywhere in the world, can view them.

A few years ago the St Kilda Council in Melbourne organised a festival that was held around the Luna Park/ Bay area of the beach side suburb. During the day around 200-300,000 people walked through visiting food and shop booths, rides and stages that featured many performing artists.

That event has continued every year and the devotees from the Melbourne temple, which is in that area of town, have been involved right from the start. A team, headed by Bhakta das, has liaised with the Council authorities to include a Jagannatha Rathayatra parade and a tent, “Hare Krishna Vedic Village.”

Inside the village there is a main stage area where devotees perform kirtan, drama, dance, puppet and magic shows. Other tents feature prasadam distribution, face painting, vegetarian cooking demonstrations, meditation workshops and temple paraphernalia and book shop.

This year, like the other previous years, was a grand success with thousands of people visiting our site to experience Krsna conscious culture in a relaxed and joyful atmosphere.

Buddhi Manta and Athanu prabhus, who have been devotees for 30 years or more, live around Whangarei, a small city 150 kilometres north of Auckland. With the help of their wives they have worked hard to establish a restaurant, Food For Life and preaching centre in separate buildings around town.

Buddhi Manta approached the City Council and asked if they could provide a free food distribution facility to serve needy people of the area. By Lord Jagannatha’s mercy (their presiding deities) the Council had a building near the centre of town that the devotees could use free of charge.

Ecstatic at this generous offer, the devotees quickly raised funds to fit out the new Food for Life facility. After a short time they were operational and began serving sumptuous prasadam to all those who came in to have a free meal.

Since then there’s been a number of articles and television programs about the Hare Krishna Food for Life program in Whangarei. All were appreciative of the devotees’ selfless work for the community.

New Varshana is the name that was given to our 90 acre property 30 minutes from downtown Auckland. Srila Prabhupada visited the city 3 times and personally installed Their Lordships Sri Sri Radha Giridhari. Now there are also big Jagannatha deities and Gaura Nitai.

A beautiful new temple was opened in 2005 at the back of the property moving from the older and smaller facility at the front. Here we have cows, horses, orchids, vegetables and even a small number of Lamas. There is also a school for over 100 primary school students.

I always enjoy visiting New Varshana. I served Their Lordships directly for two years in the seventies when I was a young brahmacari.